


The Mess That We'll Become/The Fear Of Falling Apart

by ShadowHaloedAngel



Series: Stay [2]
Category: Ocean's 8 (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bruises, Caretaking, F/F, Fever, Heist Wives, Illnesses, Past Violence, Post-Prison, Seizures, Unexplained bruises, Whumptober
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-20 06:01:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16131137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowHaloedAngel/pseuds/ShadowHaloedAngel
Summary: Given how exhausted she is, it's probably not that surprising that Debbie comes down with something. Lou's just glad she's had a little bit of First Aid training, especially since neither of them has insurance and medical assistance is pretty much out of the question. Trying to get Debbie's fever down leads to a discovery Lou finds anything but comforting, and she's getting more and more angry about whatever it is Debbie isn't telling her.Prompts: 8. Fever/10. Bruises/29. Seizure/30. Caregiver; 13. "Stay."





	The Mess That We'll Become/The Fear Of Falling Apart

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to flightinflame for sending me the prompts, to Fahre for inspiration, and to Why for being an exceedingly patient and appropriately evil sounding board and second pair of eyes. 
> 
> I took one look at the prompts and knew I had to do something with Debbie and Lou for them, but rather than doing the challenge properly with a series of short fics, I ended up planning out a whole series with a story arc and everything, combining prompts into stories. I've never done anything like this before, and I appreciate that I'm not technically doing it properly this time, but I'm excited about it. The whole series is planned, but might not all go up during October depending on how long it takes me to write. Obviously, warning, this is based on Whumptober prompts, and it's going to go pretty dark at times. I promise there will be a happy ending, because I don't do hurt without comfort, it's just that this time there's going to be a little longer to wait. I hope you'll find it worth it.
> 
> Oh, and I'll award cookies to people who figure out what the connection is between work titles as the month goes on

They’ve fallen into a new routine, and although she’s still uneasy about it, it’s gone some way towards soothing Lou’s anxiety. As far as she knows, Debbie’s still barely leaving the club even during the day, and there’s no hint of that brilliant plan she was expecting on the horizon. On the plus side though, it seems like Debbie is finally sleeping again. She even made an appearance in the club for a little while on Sunday night, dressed up like her old self and perching by the bar, flirting just a little bit with people who came close. Lou has made a mental note to have a word with Debbie about not picking too many pockets. She knows asking her to pick none would be impossible, and part of her’s just glad to have this flash of the old Debbie back, but still, Lou doesn’t want her place to get a reputation. She’s fairly sure that even Debbie isn’t going to try to bed anyone here under Lou’s nose. There’s no need for it, and besides, the two of them still aren’t quite sure where they stand, although Lou has her own thoughts about Debbie sleeping in her bed every night again.

It’s Monday, a week since Lou went to pick Debbie up in the cemetery, and two nights – technically three, she supposes, but Lou hasn’t gone to bed yet – since Debbie started sleeping in Lou’s bed. The club is empty and quiet, and Lou’s finishing off the last of the side work before she goes to bed. She could leave it for her team, but Lou takes a little bit of pride in doing the dirty jobs. If the owner will do it, there’s no reason for anyone else to refuse to do it. Sometimes she even cleans the toilets, but only about once a month. 

This is always Lou’s favourite time of the week in the club, the small hours of Monday morning after the weekend partiers have gone home, at the beginning of the club’s weekend of sorts. The patrons leave and the staff finish up, and it’s just Lou in this space that’s all her own, this business that she’s built up, doing the grunt work to keep it going. It’s mindless, but it’s grounding, and she enjoys the feeling of recapturing the old days when it really was more or less just her. They’d been some long, long days, but good ones, and she’d been proud of making something real. 

Debbie had come down for a while earlier that night, and hell if Lou’s mouth hadn’t gone just a little bit dry. She still looked damn good, and Lou wasn’t even sure if she’d made an effort. She was pretty sure she hadn’t. When Debbie Ocean really made an effort, she could stop traffic without a backward glance. Still, having a gorgeous brunette at the bar, mysterious, alluring, with flashes of skin and sinful smiles had probably driven up the night’s totals, and knowing Debbie she’d probably had fun with it. Lou knows she can’t exactly rely on the Debbie Ocean effect as part of her business plan, and if she’s there every night like that the magic will wear off, but if Debbie’s not entirely avoiding people now that’s progress. Secretly Lou’s just a little bit proud of Debbie having the chance to see everything she’s built up in action. It’s a good life, and she’s worked hard for it. 

Lou clears away the last of the glasses, putting them in a tub she leaves in the kitchen - dishes are the morning’s problem – and heads upstairs, more than ready to crash out for a few hours wrapped around Debbie like she belongs there. Debbie disappeared a few hours ago, and Lou’s hoping that when she walks into the bedroom she’ll find Debbie already asleep. They haven’t really tested it yet, and Debbie’s adjusted to Lou’s schedule with the club pretty easily, but she’s still worn to the bone and if she can start getting back to normal, in all honesty Lou would be overjoyed. Only being able to sleep with your partner there isn’t really as romantic as all the trashy novels say in practice. 

The doors are locked and Lou heads upstairs, already tugging the hem of her shirt over her head as she walks into the bedroom, and then she freezes. 

Debbie is in bed, flat on her back and staring at the ceiling, back arched, twitching, and Lou runs over because fuck, /fuck/ this is not good. She’s fortunate Debbie’s in bed with nothing too close, her head pillowed with something soft already, and Lou’s first aid training is racing through her head. She’d had to get it as part of opening the club and it's never really come up before past a couple of incidents with broken glass, but this… she manages to stamp on the urge to restrain Debbie, to catch her hands or to pin her by the shoulders because that’s the wrong thing to do but it’s terrifying to watch her like this.

Instead Lou waits, and she is starting to appreciate what the guidance says when it mentions that seizures are usually quick but may feel like they take an eternity. She’s staring at her watch, one eye on Debbie, one eye watching the second hand creep around, and Debbie is still and the second hand is still creeping around and she’s still still, and Lou lets out a breath she didn’t even know she was holding. Okay. Okay. Next. Check the breathing. And she reaches out with shaking hands and tilts Debbie’s head back and leans in to listen, and she can hear her breathing, see her chest rising and falling and that’s such a relief but Lou can /feel/ the heat radiating from Debbie when she leans in close and she checks her forehead with the back of her hand. Well. That would explain the seizure. 

They were taught the potential causes, just in case, and it turns out the brain can react in strange ways to circumstances it doesn’t like. Low blood sugar can cause seizures, high temperatures, sometimes hormonal changes, stress… and exhaustion. After however many nights it must be that Debbie hasn’t slept, Lou isn’t surprised that she might have come down with something, and the everything combining to cause a seizure doesn’t seem that out of left field at all. Which is a relief, because neither of them have health insurance and Lou has never been able to wrap her head around the American system anyway. Unless it happens again, Lou is fairly confident she can write this off as fever and exhaustion and nothing more than that, and she’s praying to a god she doesn’t believe in that it works out. She knows if Debbie needs treatment, though, they’ll find some way to make it work. Sue would be a good port of call, a medic they know who is… a friend to the criminal fraternity when they need one. Lou hasn’t had to ask her for a favour in a while, but people don’t tend to forget Debbie Ocean once they’ve met her. 

Lou shifts Debbie into the recovery position, watching her like her life depends on it, and when Debbie shifts and groans it’s like the world has snapped back to reality again and the pounding in Lou's chest subsides. 

She’s conscious, not making much sense which isn’t a surprise with the fever, but conscious. Okay. She’s conscious. The next step has to be trying to bring her temperature down, and Lou’s hands go to the buttons on Debbie’s nightgown with only the briefest hesitation. 

It’s not the first time she’s seen Debbie naked, not by a long shot, but since Debbie got out of prison... they haven’t, and they haven’t talked about it either. Debbie’s been changing in private in her room before she joins Lou in bed, and more than once Lou’s found herself wondering if Debbie has something to hide. Part of her, the part that still wants to believe that everything is okay and somehow this is going to work out fine, says that it’s only natural for someone who’s been in prison for six years, constantly exposed with no real privacy to want to take advantage of it now, even with someone she knows well. The darker part of her mind, the one with the alarm bells that have been going off ever since she realised Debbie wouldn’t look her in the eye anymore, says that there’s more to it than that, that there’s more to all of this. The fear of it pools in Lou’s stomach like bile but there’s nothing she can do about it without answers, and Debbie’s still not talking. 

Lou unfastens her nightgown, tugging it open. She can’t get it off in this position, but she can at least make a start on cooling Debbie down. As Debbie’s body is revealed, Lou has to turn away, tucking her mouth against her arm to muffle the noise as she retches, taking deep breaths and trying to fight down the urge to be sick, because Debbie’s body is mottled purple and green and yellow and Lou knows the marks of a beating anywhere and /fuck/, what has Debbie been hiding from her?

When she’s regained some self-control, Lou looks back at the figure on the bed, trying for a more clinical detachment now. But as she stares at the marks, a darker one blossoming over the side of Debbie’s ribs, green and yellow down her stomach, another purple monster on her thigh, Lou can’t stop herself from reaching out and ghosting soothing fingers over them while hatred burns in her heart. Is this why Debbie hasn’t been sleeping? Isn’t this the kind of thing prison guards are meant to prevent? Hell, it wasn’t even like Debbie was in a particularly high security prison, she wasn’t a dangerous criminal, she was in there for white collar crime! Every single instinct that Lou has been trying so hard to ignore is whispering that this is something more than just a prison fight. If it wasn’t, Debbie would have told her, Debbie would have played it up for sympathy, come home and stripped off and made huge eyes while asking Lou to take care of her with the kind of purr that could make an angel sin. This wasn’t a simple beating, and whatever it was, Debbie had been lying about it from the start. 

Lou wants answers, but Debbie’s in no fit state to supply them right now, so they’ll have to wait. Come the morning though, Lou has some questions to ask. She’s always been able to tell just as much from what Debbie won’t say as what she will, but this time she’s hoping for a little more honesty, because otherwise there is no way this is going to work. Most of all, the traitor part of her brain whispers, she wants to know who else she’s put at risk by bringing Debbie Ocean here, because people who dish out beatings like this always have a reason, and they rarely stop at one.

After a few breaths to steady herself again and regain her equilibrium, Lou heads to the bathroom to fetch some cool cloths knowing it’ll take more than just stripping off to bring Debbie’s temperature down. She tucks one around the back of her neck, one between her ankles, and she’s putting one on the inside of Debbie’s wrists, all places where the blood runs at high volume close to the surface, when Debbie’s hand closes on her wrist and her eyes crack open just a little. 

Lou’s heart’s in her throat as Debbie croaks, voice ragged and throat raw, “Stay?”

And she presses a kiss to Debbie’s forehead and does her best to shift into the bed without letting go because there’s no way Debbie’s going to let go of her, and Lou wouldn’t want her to anyway, and her chest is aching because Debbie Ocean has never begged for anything real in her life and it feels wrong for her to start now and for so small a thing. 

“…Don’t worry baby, I’m not going anywhere.”

She’s not even sure if Debbie can hear her as Lou settles down facing her, stroking her fingers through Debbie’s sweat-soaked hair, but the brunette settles all the same. Lou wants to tell herself it’s just a coincidence, that Debbie has no idea who she is or where she is, but there’s a little glow of pride that says maybe, just maybe, Debbie still loves her the way Lou has never stopped loving Debbie. It’s nice to be needed, and not only can’t she say no, she doesn’t want to. She’ll be here as long as it takes, but as soon as she’s fit to, Debbie better talk.

**Author's Note:**

> If someone you know has a seizure, clear the area around them, do not restrain them, and cushion their head. You do not need to put anything in their mouth, there is no danger of them swallowing their tongue. When the seizure is over, tilt their head back to make sure their airways are clear, check they're breathing, and put them in the recovery position. Then call emergency services.


End file.
